Beginning with the Creator?

Here’s the John Piper quote I’ve been discussing:
And so the biblical mindset starts with the assumption that God is the center of reality. All thinking starts with the assumption that God has basic rights as the Creator of all things. He has goals that fit with his nature and perfect character. Then the biblical mindset [...]

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Self-giving is absolute reality

[I]n self-giving, if anywhere, we touch a rhythm of all creation and of all being. For the Eternal Word gives Himself in mortal sacrifice; and that not only on Calvary. For when He was crucified on Calvary He did that in the wild weather of His outlying provinces what He had done at home in [...]

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Great links

I know I still have a couple of posts on the Piper quote to write.  I’ll get to that…
Have you noticed the recent addition to my sidebar?  You can read some recommended posts I’ve found helpful or at least provocative.
They all seem to be by Peter Leithart.  How did that happen?  Simple.  He writes far [...]

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Avoiding a fourth [Thawed out Thursday]

No (good) trinitarian theologian wants to have a fourth thing – a divine substance considered apart from the Three Persons.  But it’s important to be aware that this error (effectively having a quaternity) has two versions.  There is a vulgar quaternity and a more insidious one.
The vulgar one looks like this:

Here is the “shamrock” trinity [...]

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Some more thoughts on glory

I will return to the Piper quote when I’ve got some time.  Meantime, here are some jottings I did a while ago on glory in John.  They are not joined up thoughts, it’s all a bit scattershot…
Jesus insists He will not glorify Himself, but His Father glorifies Him (John 8:50,54).  Glory is other-centred – even [...]

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Theo-centric?

In a previous post I asked for feedback on this quote:
And so the biblical mindset starts with the assumption that God is the center of reality. All thinking starts with the assumption that God has basic rights as the Creator of all things. He has goals that fit with his nature and perfect character. Then [...]

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He loves us because He loves us

I wasn’t a huge fan of this paragraph quoted on Tony’s blog (as my comment makes clear).
But I love this one:
Thomas Manton, from a sermon on John 3:16
“Love is at the bottom of all. We may give a reason of other things, but we cannot give a reason of his love, God showed his wisdom, [...]

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Glory is not…

Glory is not a something that God gets.  Glory is the display of who God is. 
And this display, shining out from Christ and Him crucified, reveals the overflowing plenitude of God’s being as Giver.
Glory is not what lies behind the cross (the cross considered as a veil or mere stepping-stone).  God’s glory is this [...]

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Nicene Trinitarianism (a re-post, slightly reworked)

The trinity is a very old doctrine. See The Trinitarian Old Testament for just how old.
But the council of Nicea gave us certain terminology that is accepted by both East and West.  The creed that came from it (and here I refer to the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed of 381) is basic to all Christian churches.  Yet its [...]

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Now Jimmy, don’t make Daddy look bad, He’s counting on you

I’m not sure I like this from John Piper.  Not sure I like it at all.  It’s an illustration directed at kids in a 1999 sermon, recently quoted by Justin Taylor.
Your daddy is standing in a swimming pool out a little bit from the edge. You are, let’s say, three years old and standing on [...]

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Calvin on the proper and the accidental office of the gospel

Last week Dave Kirkman helped me to distinguish between what Luther called God’s ‘alien work’ and His ‘proper work’.
Death is the alien work.  Life through death is gospel and God’s proper work.  But it’s extremely important not to view death and life as equivalents in God’s eyes.  One is the alien work, transformed by the [...]

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Glorifying the Other – the heart-beat of God’s own life

From Halden:
“I do not seek my own glory” (John 8:5). With these words Jesus set a precedent for all those who claim to follow him. Fundamental to the call to discipleship is the renunciation of seeking to glorify, to magnify, to enhance and promote oneself.
It is often thought that this calling is based on the [...]

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Thawed out Thursday – The God who is…

Here’s the first thing I ever published on the internet.  It’s the heart of my website began about 5 years ago.  It’s a decent summary of where I’m coming from theologically. This is the introduction to 5 Doctrine of God papers.
 
The God who is…
Revealed in Jesus
We meet the Living God only in Jesus. He is [...]

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The Trinity and divine attributes

Not…
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But…
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Got it?
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Trinity rant #37462

Here’s a beef of mine – when people almost completely reverse Gregory of Nazianzus’s famous trinity quote while expressing admiration for it.  You know the one…
“I cannot think on the one without quickly being encircled by the splendor of the three nor can I discern the three without being straightway carried back to the one.”.
I [...]

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Our God’s done stuff

It’s a law of human resources that the less experience a person has the more adjectives appear on their resume.  “Team-player.  High-achiever.  Fast learner.  Leadership qualities.”  Wherever these descriptors are piled up it’s designed to hide a worrying lack of achievement.
Dead idols have a rubbish resume.  No educational history.  No work experience.  No prior achievements.  [...]

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Schori: Not too hung up on the mechanism

From Stand Firm in Faith
Any number of things madden me about this:
1. If Jesus is a ‘mechanism’ for Schori – she ain’t a sister.  She’s just not.  If Jesus is incidental to the identity of ‘God’ she’s got the wrong god.
2. Apparently Schori looks to fruits of the Spirit in religious [...]

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Thawed out Thursdays

The dumb thing about blogging is that you’re always burying your old stuff with whatever nonsense occured to you in the shower that morning.  Almost 500 posts on it occurs to me that newer is not necessarily better and, apart from Bobby, I’m not sure how many of you were following the blog from the [...]

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A theology of preaching – part 2

Go to theology network for the full paper on preaching.  I’ll post it here in chunks.  Be great to talk about it if you want to comment.
The Speaking God
Let’s begin at the beginning.  Our God is the Speaking God.  The eternal life of Father, Son and Spirit has ever been an out-going, communicative life.  Because [...]

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Some convictions of mine

The OT is not functionally unitarian
Christian revelation cannot be functionally unitarian
God simply is trinity
Functional unitarianism can in no sense be a preparation for trinitarianism
The oneness of the triune God is nothing like the oneness of the unitarian god.
Trinity is not a nuance
There is no way to shove ‘Trinity’ in a corner while we discuss ‘God’
Whatever [...]

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A thought on why The Angel matters

I’ve been involved in a blog discussion about the Angel of the LORD. 94 comments and still going strong. 
I’d like to clarify a couple of things about the Angel of the LORD:
The Angel of the LORD is not by any means the only title under which Christ appears in the OT.  He also appears simply as [...]

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Trinity rant # 287

From a random internet sermon I listened to this evening:
God does not react.  He cannot react. God is pure initiation.  He only leads.
Where has this assumption come from?  Not trinitarian reflection.
Where does it lead?  Philosophical determinism.
What would it look like to begin with the living God Who initiates and responds, Who leads and follows?
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A theology of mission 4 – Evangelism only?

We have been thinking about mission grounded in God’s own life.  God is the Sending God, His Sent Son and the Reconciling Spirit – this is not simply something He does but who He is.
So it is with the Church.  We have inherited our mission from the Sent One and we too find ourselves not simply [...]

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Trinity Rant #843

Trinity is not a nuance.
When we unfold the trinitarian life of God in His gospel work, we’re not simply adding a level of detail to functionally unitarian ‘God’-speak.  Trinity is not just a nuancing of more basic truths.  To speak of trinity is to uncover a logic which alters the way we conceive of everything, from [...]

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A theology of mission 3

In the last post, we saw the deepest continuity between God’s mission and ours.
But now we must highlight the discontinuity.
Continuity and Discontinuity
Perhaps the Matthean Great Commission will show both the continuity and discontinuity points:
‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them [...]

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A theology of mission 2 – The Missio Dei

When Karl Barth addressed the Brandenburg Missionary Conference in 1932 he introduced a missiological perspective which has determined the shape of mission theology in every part of the Church. 
“Must not even the most faithful missionary, the most convinced friend of missions, have reason to reflect that the term missio was in the ancient Church [...]

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Adjectives for God

Often when we use adjectives for God we reach for the big guns but find that they don’t quite pack the punch we’d hoped.  We say ‘Holy’ and ‘Glorious’, ‘Supreme’ and ‘Majestic’ but the more we Capitalize the Words, The More People Just File Them Away In SPECIAL GOD-SPEAK files, never to consider them again.
I’ve [...]

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Being in very nature God… He humbled Himself

6 Christ Jesus, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7 but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death–even death on a [...]

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God loves God more than God loves us?

In comments, Ed brought up this claim for consideration:
 God loves God more than God loves us.
I’ll jot down a few thoughts and then make way for Bobby’s comment at the bottom which nails it in about a tenth the space it takes me.  (Which again proves how horribly prolix I am!)
I have two problems with [...]

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Piper’s Theology of Glory

Stephen Murray alerts us to Tony Payne’s reservations about Piper.
You can read Piper’s seven theses about God’s glory here.
In response Payne wonders…
Is Piper’s message so centred on God and his glory (and our enjoyment of God in his self-glorification) that Jesus has become a mechanism by which this takes place, rather than the central focus [...]

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When was Christ Begotten – and For Why??

Jesus is God’s Son. And there was never a time when He was not God’s Son.  Equally, there was never a time when the Father was not Father of His eternal Son, Jesus.  Wind back the clock into the depths of eternity and no matter how far back you go you will always find this: [...]

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Trinity Re-Post 3

Off on holiday now for 9 days.  Some frivolity is about to be posted automatically by the blog.  If you want something more theological to chew on, here’s a few older posts on the trinity issues that have been coming up recently.
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Avoiding a Fourth
No (good) trinitarian theologian wants to have a fourth thing – a [...]

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Trinity Re-Post 2

Off on holiday now for 9 days.  Some frivolity is about to be posted automatically by the blog.  If you want something more theological to chew on, here’s a few older posts on the trinity issues that have been coming up recently.
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Oneness and Threness
I remember a friend asking me what I thought God was doing before [...]

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Trinity Re-Post 1

Off on holiday now for 9 days.  Some frivolity is about to be posted automatically by the blog.  If you want something more theological to chew on, here’s a few older posts on the trinity issues that have been coming up recently.
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God is not revealed in His Twin
This should be very obvious, but we easily [...]

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Trinity, revelation and OT – summary

In response to my Christ in the OT posts, Pete Myers posted this.  We then interacted here and here.
I then posted these ten propositions on Trinity, revelation and the Old Testament:
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1.  Revelation in Christ is revelation in the distinct Person of the Divine Mediator
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2. Our doctrine of God goes awry if we begin without a conscious [...]

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Trinity, revelation and OT – 1

You may know that I (sporadically but vigourously!) bang the drum for Christ the eternal Mediator being the deliberately revealed, consciously known object of faith in the Old Testament.  Here are some posts on the issue.
Pete Myers read it and posted this.  And our further discussions are here and here.
By way of some kind of response, here [...]

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Trinity, revelation and OT – 2

You may know that I (sporadically but vigourously!) bang the drum for Christ the eternal Mediator being the deliberately revealed, consciously known object of faith in the Old Testament.  Here are some posts on the issue.
Pete Myers read it and posted this.  And our further discussions are here and here.
By way of some kind of response, here [...]

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Trinity, revelation and OT – 3

You may know that I (sporadically but vigourously!) bang the drum for Christ the eternal Mediator being the deliberately revealed, consciously known object of faith in the Old Testament.  Here are some posts on the issue.
Pete Myers read it and posted this.  And our further discussions are here and here.
By way of some kind of response, here [...]

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Trinity, revelation and OT – 4

You may know that I (sporadically but vigourously!) bang the drum for Christ the eternal Mediator being the deliberately revealed, consciously known object of faith in the Old Testament.  Here are some posts on the issue.
Pete Myers read it and posted this.  And our further discussions are here and here.
By way of some kind of response, here [...]

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Trinity, revelation and OT – 5

You may know that I (sporadically but vigourously!) bang the drum for Christ the eternal Mediator being the deliberately revealed, consciously known object of faith in the Old Testament.  Here are some posts on the issue.
Pete Myers read it and posted this.  And our further discussions are here and here.
By way of some kind of response, here [...]

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Trinity, revelation and OT – 6

You may know that I (sporadically but vigourously!) bang the drum for Christ the eternal Mediator being the deliberately revealed, consciously known object of faith in the Old Testament.  Here are some posts on the issue.
Pete Myers read it and posted this.  And our further discussions are here and here.
By way of some kind of response, here [...]

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Trinity, revelation and OT – 7

You may know that I (sporadically but vigourously!) bang the drum for Christ the eternal Mediator being the deliberately revealed, consciously known object of faith in the Old Testament.  Here are some posts on the issue.
Pete Myers read it and posted this.  And our further discussions are here and here.
By way of some kind of response, here [...]

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Trinity, revelation and OT – 8

You may know that I (sporadically but vigourously!) bang the drum for Christ the eternal Mediator being the deliberately revealed, consciously known object of faith in the Old Testament.  Here are some posts on the issue.
Pete Myers read it and posted this.  And our further discussions are here and here.
By way of some kind of response, here [...]

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Trinity, revelation and OT – 9

You may know that I (sporadically but vigourously!) bang the drum for Christ the eternal Mediator being the deliberately revealed, consciously known object of faith in the Old Testament.  Here are some posts on the issue.
Pete Myers read it and posted this.  And our further discussions are here and here.
By way of some kind of response, here [...]

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Trinity, revelation and OT – 10

You may know that I (sporadically but vigourously!) bang the drum for Christ the eternal Mediator being the deliberately revealed, consciously known object of faith in the Old Testament.  Here are some posts on the issue.
Pete Myers read it and posted this.  And our further discussions are here and here.
By way of some kind of response, here [...]

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Some responses

I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking ‘Where’s Glen been the last few days?  Why has he abandoned us?  For where else can we go to find such pithy and incisive theological tid-bits??’
Where else indeed dear reader!?
Unless of course you’ve been reading here and here where I’ve been responding to some thoughtful critiques of my [...]

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Jesus is LORD – not Son of LORD. Some clarifications

Dave K has asked some excellent questions of my last post on this issue.  Here they are in full.  Afterwards is my attempt to address them. 
I’ve been musing on this post over the last day. This is what I have been wondering:
This is clearly right, in many passages NT writers read Jesus in OT passages [...]

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Israel’s Tribal Deity 3

We’ve been considering the logic of the OT arguments for the true God.  The argument is not: Think about who the true God is – the true God is actually Yahweh.  The argument is: Think about Yahweh (encounter Him, see Him at work, trust Him) – Yahweh is the true God.
The former argument assumes we [...]

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Israel’s Tribal Deity 2

Where is the decisive revelation of the name of Israel’s tribal deity?  Mount Sinai:
12 [The Angel of the LORD] said, “But I WILL BE with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.” 13 [...]

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Israel’s Tribal Deity

This week I was reading Jeremiah 10 on the difference between Yahweh and idols.  It struck me that the prophet doesn’t argue the way we often do.  We usually say ‘There are idols that are tribal deities of the nations, but the living God is not like that.  The living God is the uncreated Creator.  [...]

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Nicea comes before Chalcedon

Here’s a christological motto to live by: Nicea comes before Chalcedon.
What do I mean by this?  I’m glad you asked.
It’s common in christological debates to begin by thinking of the Council of Chalcedon, 451 AD (btw I’m not guaranteeing the quality/accuracy of the wikipedia links).  There a two-nature christology was hammered out in which
We confess that [...]

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Christ in the Old Testament 14

The End?
Ok time to bring these thoughts to a close (for now).
For links to the 14 posts in this series go here.
For the full text of the 14 posts go here.
Let me finish with a plea from the heart of true doctrine…  Jesus is the Word of God.  He is not the best Word.  He is [...]

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Christ in the Old Testament 11

Quotes from Church History continued…

JOHN OWEN
 
 
Genesis 3
… a revelation was made of a distinct person in the Deity, who in a peculiar manner did manage all the concernments of the church after the entrance of sin. (Works, vol 18, 216)
 
He by whom all things were made, and by whom all were to be renewed that [...]

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Christ in the Old Testament 10

Quotes from Church History continued…
 
 

MARTIN LUTHER
 

All the promises of God lead back to the first promise concerning Christ of Genesis 3:15.  The faith of the fathers in the Old Testament era, and our faith in the New Testament are one and the same faith in Christ Jesus…  The faith of the fathers was directed at [...]

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Christ in the Old Testament 9

Here are some now updated quotations about Christ in the OT from heavy-weights in church history.  In this post we’ll look at Justin Martyr and Irenaeus.  Next post we’ll look at Luther and Calvin, then finally John Owen and Jonathan Edwards.  I’ve been very selective, not wanting these posts to go on too long.  There are [...]

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Christ in the Old Testament 8

Ok, here are 10 11 reasons this matters.  (Dev’s reminded me of an absolutely crucial one).  I’m not going to spend very long elucidating any of them.  I’m sure they’ll become rants of their own in future posts:
 
Why it’s important to see the Hebrew Scriptures as already and inherently a messianically focussed trinitarian revelation:
 

To make sense [...]

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Christ in the Old Testament 7

Might be worth a little mini-post on Psalms.
It would be tempting to highlight “particularly Messianic” Psalms and say “There, see, Jesus is spoken of here and there in the psalter.”  But I’m not sure that’s right.  I once told a friend I was helping preach through an 8 week series called “Jesus in the Psalms”.  He said [...]

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Christ in the Old Testament 6

Ok lets look at a few more key OT passages. 
Here’s a favourite of a friend of mine who uses it on Jehovah’s Witnesses.  Genesis 19:24
Then the LORD rained down burning sulphur on Sodom and Gomorrah from the LORD out of the heavens.
This even works in the New World Translation:
Then Jehovah made it rain sulphur and [...]

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Four surprises in Mark 8

(I’ll get back to the series soon, just thought I’d break things up).
I was reading some very familiar words again:
 Jesus then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after [...]

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Christ in the Old Testament 4

The Angel of the LORD continued…
One more post on the Angel, then we’ll look at some other multiple-LORD passages.
Check out Judges 6:11-24:
11 The Angel of the LORD came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it [...]

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Christ in the Old Testament 3

The Angel of the LORD continued…
 
Let’s look at the Angel in action in Genesis and Exodus.
 
 
His first appearance is to the Egyptian, Hagar:
 

Then the Angel of the LORD told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” The Angel added, “I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to [...]

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Christ in the Old Testament 2

Who is the Angel of the LORD?
In my last post I laid out my intention to show from the Old Testament that Christ has always been the one Mediator between God and man. 
I find the easiest place to start in these discussions is with the Angel of the LORD.  If a person cannot see [...]

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Moving house

Hello all, I’m moving house tomorrow.  Apparently broadband won’t be up and running at the new place for another two weeks (which will limit my blogging opportunities)!  But if you need your fix of ‘Christ the Truth’ why not go to my website. 
Here’s one of the more central pages which links to five papers I wrote [...]

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Avoiding a fourth

No (good) trinitarian theologian wants to have a fourth thing – a divine substance considered apart from the Three Persons.  But it’s important to be aware that this error (effectively having a quaternity) has two versions.  There is a vulgar quaternity and a more insidious one.
The vulgar one looks like this:
 
Here is the “shamrock” trinity [...]

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So what??!

A friend of mine is at Bible college and has been set an essay on trinitarian theology and the difference between east and west.  He emailed me to ask “So what??! I mean realistically what are the implications of the different approaches?”
Here’s part of my response.  I have obviously caricatured positions to make a point.   I’m [...]

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Nicene Trinitarianism

Much of this is from a comment or two I’ve made here at Dan Hames’ excellent blog.
The trinity is a very old doctrine. See The Trinitarian Old Testament for just how old. But Nicea (by which I mean the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed of 381 which we say in church today) gave us certain terminology that is accepted by [...]

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Mission, evangelism and social action – part 4

A little detour on Barth…
Last century, Karl Barth was key in re-emphasizing mission as the outflow of the life of God.  At the Brandenburg Missionary Conference in 1932  he said:
“Must not even the most faithful missionary, the most convinced friend of missions, have reason to reflect that the term missio was in the ancient Church [...]

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Mission, evangelism and social action – part 3

God is a Gospel-Alone God.  He is known only in the Gospel.  His very being is a Gospel Being.  There’s no use even conceiving of a God other than the Father revealed in the Son by the Spirit.  If you’re not convinced, read these posts which were digressions to bolster the point:
       The Trinitarian OT
       Oneness [...]

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God is not a narcisist

Ok – just one more digression before we get back to missions.  This flows on from our discussions about the trinity…
 I’m a bit slow in my travels around the blogosphere so I apologise that this is about a week out of date.  But, Ben Witherington (recently-ish) managed to get 83 comments on a post called “Is [...]

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Oneness and Threeness

I remember a friend asking me what I thought God was doing before the creation of the world.  I answered “They were enjoying one another.”  He looked very quizzical and then said, “….Oh! You mean the Trinity!” I remember thinking “Well yes, what god were you thinking of?”
Yet many will think of God in ways that are divorced from [...]

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The Trinitarian Old Testament

This, together with my next post on One-ness and Three-ness, is a detour from my series on mission, evangelism and social action. 
The point I’m seeking to secure in this detour is that God is known only in the Gospel.  He is a Gospel-Alone God and thus His church has a Gospel-Alone mission.  There is not a God to [...]

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Mission, evangelism and social action – part 2

I tried to argue in the last post that neither soteriology nor ecclesiology nor eschatology should define our priorities in mission.  Rather, it’s our doctrine of God that must be our first point of call.  It is the God whose being is in the Father’s sending (missio) of the Son who is the proper foundation [...]

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Mission, evangelism and social action – part 1

Here are some thoughts on the inter-relation of mission, evangelism and social action. I have written a longer essay on this on my website here.  Here are some abridged thoughts… In part one I will flag up the doctrine of God issues which ought to be the very foundation of our missiology.  But first, a word of [...]

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Sermon recommendation

On the Cruciform God thing - here’s a brilliant sermon by Darrell Johnson on these same issues.  His text is Phil 2:5-11 and his title: “So that’s what it means to be God!”
The real realization is not “Oh, Jesus is the god I’d always believed in!” – how’s that for fitting the Saviour onto a Procrustean [...]

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The Cruciform God

[I've edited this post from it's original form which was a little specialized and 'try-hard'!] 
For a long time I’ve held a certain verse from John at arm’s length:
“The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life.” (John 10:17)
I’ve always held it at arm’s length because… well what would it mean to take [...]

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